Finland is a kind of unusual place...

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1 SARPANEVA WATCHES OY TALLBERGINKATU 1, P.O. BOX 41 FI HELSINKI, FINLAND DOMICILE: HELSINKI BUSINESS ID: FI VAT NO: For Immediate Press Release 7 July 2008 Finland is a kind of unusual place... Everyone vaguely knows that Finland is a rather unusual country, located someplace in the neighborhood of the Nordic lands far to the north of the European continent. Experienced travelers might also have heard about the short, silent Laplanders or Sami living in conclave with their beloved reindeer in the woods not so far from the North Pole, and experts of the second degree will know about the never setting sun of the Finnish mid-summer, as well as the Finnish rites of celebrating the longest day by praising Dionysus with vast amounts of alcohol. However, of one thing we can be certain: even if you only know the name of the country, the last thing you would associate with it is watchmaking. A renowned watchmaking school, the only truly independent school of its kind in the world, located at Leppävaara, has been silently supplying highly trained graduates to the Swiss watch industry for many years now. You will find them working for all the major Swiss brands, often dealing with complications and even heading watchmaking and restoration departments in Switzerland. However, mechanical Finnish watches, produced and designed in Finland, were to remain unknown until now, that is. Sarpaneva Watches Sarpaneva Watches is Finland s only mechanical watchmaking company, solely dedicated to the design and production of mechanical wristwatches. Located in the country s capital Helsinki, the workshop was started in 2003 by Stepan Sarpaneva after years of training in both Finland and Switzerland that covered watchmaking in all its varieties, including hands on experience at several of Switzerland s major houses with highly specialized work on complications. The Sarpaneva workshop s philosophy towards watchmaking is firmly anchored within Stepan Sarpaneva s deep desire to express himself in more ways then solely through the purely mechanical side of watchmaking. For this reason his firm s foundation is to unite a long-term and timeless visual design together with that of high quality mechanical watchmaking. Unlike the majority of brands on the market today, this is a fundamental aspect that sets Sarpaneva Watches apart from the rest; here is one man with the ability to create novel wristwatch designs as well as unite them with the mechanical know-how of a master watchmaker. 1/5

2 Design from Finland Visually, the first thing that one notices is the distinctly different, Finnish design of the timepieces he creates that are absolutely unique, unlike the vast majority of watches on offer today. When you discover that Stepan harks from a family of well-known artists and designers, famous both inside and outside of Finland, it all begins to fall in place. His father, Pentti Sarpaneva, was well known for his unusual jewelry, bronze and glass pieces, and his uncle Timo Sarpaneva worked mainly in glass (both sculptural and utilitarian items) as well as textiles and interior design. Timo s Sarpaneva s work was the recipient of several major prizes such as the Grand Prix at the X Triennale di Milano 1954 and the subject of several studies and books. His works can be seen in more than 31 permanent museum collections across the globe from New York to Tokyo. (Those readers who also know the Iittala glassworks will have seen the Iittala logo many times it was in fact designed by Timo Sarpaneva). Stepan Sarpaneva: Actually within my family, many family members were highly active in the arts. Although it wasn t a conscious realization for me directly, I grew up finding it very natural to express myself by making and creating things as well. I still have a little stuffed toy mouse that I made from old bits of cloth I made when I was only 8 years old... However, mechanical toys were the main thing and that meant working on motorcycles. I was taking them apart before I was even old enough to legally ride one! Many writers have tried to explain and define what is at the heart of Finnish design, and each definition remains a priori a subjective one. But there are a number of points in which even the Finns themselves will agree. Stepan: For me, when I design watches, I can suddenly be inspired by really gritty, direct and even somewhat ugly looking things like old rusty iron parts or stuff you come across in junkyards or in nature, whatever the origin. I guess this is a real family trait; a few critics of my father s jewelry said it was too primitive and basic in styling and also too large actually much more like sculpture. So when I now look back on my father s and my uncle s work, I notice the same family attraction with primal elements is present, a fascination with the beautiful simplicity and power you sense in primitive or primordial forms and shapes. But you know, you can t just stick those ideas into a watch or even jewelry just like that; the trick is that you somehow transform them into a new vision or conceptualization, retaining the power of the basic idea encapsulated within it. 2/5

3 Sarpaneva Korona A good case in point is the recently released Korona series of wristwatches that have appealed deeply to many collectors from all over the globe. Stepan: People ask me where the idea came from, and it is a typical story for me. One night really late, walking home with my friends, the Moon was full and bright and shining on the circular, open worked and rusty iron gratings that surround the base of the trees on the street near my home. For some reason those details just popped into my head and stayed there. So, next day I started drawing and playing with the form; made a paper cutout of such an open-worked shape and began piling them one over the other, and those kinds of things. When I repeated this with metal parts, a friend of mine noticed that it also began to have something suggestive of the outward shimmering, the corona, around the Sun s edge during a solar eclipse. That s how the dial of the Korona series was formed just a passing glance at something that you normally see every single day but somehow never really notice. The Moonphase indication of the Korona K3 grew from that departure point. The open grates of the dial, despite the metalwork, also were suggestive of a forest, or a cloudy night-time sky, or outer space somehow. I realized that by putting the Moon under this dial it would allow you to actually see the moon approaching its phases this is something quite simple really, but which I personally have never seen in a wristwatch before. So said, so done, and the only question was how the Moon should look. Some writers have commented on the Moon s somber face in the Korona K3, but Stepan has other ideas about that. Stepan: You know, here in Finland, we are not a very extrovert kind of people. Maybe it has to do with our past history and having been taken over by the Swedes and then the Russians, but everyone here floats around with an aura of slight melancholy I don t know how else to describe it. So a smiling moon was out of the question, also because a Moonphase smiling at me all the time is too much like those yellow smiley faces they put in s. So I decided to give the Moon an aura of aristocratic melancholy, with a bit of indecision as to whether he is basically happy or sad in nature. The expression of the Moon on the Korona K3 just is same as the Finnish people here. Creating the two 18-carat Moonphase discs for the Korona K3 itself is also a complicated task. The first dilemma concerns the dimensions, as the face is only 0.4 mm thick yet has four levels of elevation. The first step requires creating a drawing six times the actual size, followed by cutting a rough model from plate stock, one piece corresponding to each level of elevation of the oversized model. These parts are then fixed together to form the model plate for the pantograph, which will mill the shapes into a small piece of copper the actual size of the Moonphase indicator. This copper version, which will serve later as an electrode, is then cleaned up and fine-tuned by a master engraver before the contours are electro etched 0.4 mm deep into a steel pressing block, thus creating a negative image of the face. Last, the eyes are modeled by hand into the negative image and the whole is finished by a master engraver and diamond polished before undergoing hardening. This is followed by yet another polishing. Only now can the production of the Moonphase begin. The whole process from drawing to finished Moon takes a specialist company, also located in Finland, about two weeks to complete. 3/5

4 Sarpaneva Supernova The Supernova, (a small run of ten examples, all sold out long ago), was a design taken from the higher spheres as it were. In this case the design was inspired by the explosion that takes place when a new star is born from older, ancient material. (Interestingly, there is an organic side to these astrophysical phenomena; all the iron in the universe, including the iron in the red blood cells of your body, was created in explosions just like that). Stepan: The Supernova was very radical at the time I created it, and I can tell you it was very difficult to make. The case is very complex in shape and requires polishing and brushing on different areas that can only be accomplished by hand, and the same goes for the subdials and hands and many other parts inside the movement. Although that edition of ten sold out within a few weeks, it is very likely that the Supernova will be returning in a new realization within the very foreseeable future. Movements Stepan is keenly aware of the problems surrounding the creation and finding of good movements, and has already been working for many years behind the scenes to find the best movements for his watches. He was in touch with the firm SOPROD S.A. years ago, and since that time they have been developing a new movement and have even been working on the creation of their own balance springs. SOPROD is a small and little known company that is however acknowledged in Switzerland as the supplier of among others, the movements for the Richard Mille RM007 ladies watch and Hautlance. Their new movement is a healthy and stable workhorse movement using no ETA parts, thus making their new creation a landmark within the movement culture of Switzerland. Sarpaneva Watches is using this caliber in their present wristwatch creations as well as in future developments to come. Stepan: The SOPROD movement is very robust and stable, which sounds simple, but is actually not easy to achieve. It also lends itself to ideas I also have for the future to create other kinds of indications and possibilities for my watches, so I am really happy with this potential. The movement is a starting point for me, and each caliber is treated separately and finished accordingly with a number of changes for each model I produce. Since I can change and adjust almost every detail I want right here in the workshop, it means I am very flexible and able to react quickly to any ideas I want to implement. 4/5

5 A flexible approach Independent, compact, small, quick to react these are some of the basic philosophies behind Stepan s workshop philosophy. Stepan: I have no desire to get too big or become a slave of the watches themselves; I want to see the design and making of watches as my passion and a place for me to try out new ideas and react freely to impulses around me. This of course has certain consequences for me as well as my clients. Of each model, I will definitely not be making many hundreds of pieces a year in total and I will be changing the shapes of cases as well as many different details regularly. In addition I will certainly develop new models and more complicated timepieces. But this has nothing to do with a secret wish to make people crazy with so-called limited editions. I just want to stay fresh and explore! So right now, I don t expect to make more than about a hundred versions of a watch before I begin to change things about it. This is something in my family, my father and uncle were known for this too: after something was completed, they didn t hang around enjoying it; they were already busy with yet another new project or concept. This approach and hunger for new challenges is something I sense in myself as well. What are the consequences of this kind of thinking? Well for sure, collectors and watch lovers are going to be seeing a number of different watches being created in the future, perhaps in some cases with matching jewelry or separate jewelry designed for men and women. New shapes and types of watches are already in pre-production. So the only thing to do for those who are really interested is to stay tuned for the next episode of this ongoing story! For press and media enquiries, please contact: press@sarpanevawatches.com 5/5

6 STEPAN SARPANEVA

7 Stepan Sarpaneva at his workshop

8 Sarpaneva Korona K3

9 Sarpaneva Korona K3

10 SARPANEVA SUPERNOVA